A&E’s Bates Motel returns for season 2 on March 3rd, and Celebified has the inside scoop on all the bloody drama. Max Thierot, Olivia Cooke, Michael Eklund, and Michael O’Neill go in-depth about this season’s ups and downs.

Writer, producer Carlton Cuse and the cast of the hit A&E show Bates Motel stop by our lounge to talk about their geeky childhood obsessions and the festival experience. “I was a spectacle collector, like glasses and I wanted to be an opthamologist,” says Vera.

The Hollywood Reporter: Norman killed Miss Watson!Carlton Cuse: The ending is certainly a provocative moment that sets up a lot of story for next year.

THR: Where will season two pick up? Will there be a time jump?Cuse: I don’t want to say exactly how we’re going to do that. Certainly the events at end of this season are very much in play when season two opens. One of the big questions looming is: What is Norman’s awareness of his own self, how much does Norma know? How much does she know about what Norman is really all about? For us, the thing that’s really engaging is this wonderful relationship between two people, which is so complicated and complex and has so many components and dimensions to it. We love writing for Norma, Norman and Dylan and we’re exited about the ways in which we’re going to spin them on down stream next season.

THR: You’re also adding to the writers’ room for season two.Cuse: In the first season, Kerry and I did a huge amount of the writing ourselves and we have a full writers room this year, which wasn’t something we had in year one. We have a real all-star team in Liz Tigelaar (Nashville, Life Unexpected) and Alexandra Cunningham (Prime Suspect, Desperate Housewives) and Nikki Toscano (Revenge, Detroit 1-8-7). Adding those three writers is going to be a huge benefit for season two. Our goal in season two is to increase the audience’s understanding of the world in which our characters live. Most importantly, a deeper understanding of who the characters themselves are. And we plan on having plenty of thrills and chills along the way.

The Hollywood Reporter: What drew you to do Bates?
Carlton Cuse:As an artist, when an idea gets under my skin, they just do. When [producer] Universal approached me and said, ‘Would you consider rebooting the Psycho franchise?’ I started thinking about it and getting more and more ideas. This idea of doing it as a contemporary prequel was really was engaging. I kept thinking about it and that’s usually my testament. I’ve been getting a ton of ideas since Lost; most of the time, I don’t end up thinking about them. But this one, I did. I came up with a bunch of ideas and pitched them to Universal and A&E and everyone was really excited about moving forward with it­­. Then Universal put Kerry and I together, and we sat down and started from scratch. Our ideas lined up incredibly well. We have slightly different skill sets and different backgrounds as writers. This show has elements of Lost and Friday Night Lights in it; it meshes in a really interesting fashion with an element of Twin Peaks, which we’re both inspired by.

THR: You also gave Norman an older brother.
Cuse: Norman’s half-brother a new character to the mythology who for us was a window into this intense, mother-son relationship. What better way to observe it than through the third party of this other brother who is kind of an outsider.

THR: Was there anything that was off limits to you both?
Cuse: The idea of doing an homage — neither one of us wanted to feel like we had to lock into the cannon of the previous Psycho movies. We wanted to take these characters and come up with our own mythology about how they were connected to each other; what was going to make Norman the guy he was going to become. Immediately we both thought, We’re not going to slavishly owe ourselves to the preexisting mythology. That was liberating. There’s this expectation that: Norman was berated by his mother into becoming crazy and that wasn’t interesting to us. What was much more interesting was creating this positive, loving, 1940s movie kind of relationship for these two.

THR: Will you be paying homage to Hitchcock at all?
Cuse: There will definitely be some little Easter eggs. What we don’t want to do is have people get thrown out of the storytelling and go, “Oh, there’s an homage to Hitchcock.”

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About Bates Motel

Inspired by Alfred Hitchcock's genre-defining film, "Psycho," "Bates Motel" is a contemporary exploration of the formative years of Norman Bates' relationship with his mother, Norma, and the world they inhabit. Viewers will have access to their dark, twisted back story and learn firsthand how Norma helped forge the most famous serial killer of them all.